Il Russi
by ComradeAngel
Summary: Turns out the Russian government has been playing with cyborgs too.
1. New Kids on the Block

**DISCLAIMER:** I don't own Gunslinger Girl, though I do own the NAPoDS. Also, screw he manga - I've only seen the entire anime so far...so yeah.

* * *

Total chaos. That was the best way to describe the Accogliente Hotel & Resort on the night of the mission.

It had started out quiet enough - get in, find the room the target was staying in, and ruthlessly fill him chock full of silenced lead, then slip out before anybody noticed. The target in question? A short, stocky man with no visible neck and a very pink, pudgy face. Yuri Stanislav Petrov - a Russian executive from Moscow who's business was apparently interfering with a local politician's agenda.

The mission had gone all according to plan, initially: Jose and Henrietta had walked up to the hotel suite and attempted to convince Petrov and his bodyguards that Jose was a reporter interested in the businessman's success, which had worked several times in the past. The cyborg and her handler were allowed into the luxury suite for a short question-and-answer session with Petrov.

This was when things started to go downhill. The duo was leaving the floor and calling for a cleanup team when absolute hell broke loose.

It had happened extraordinarily fast. A single explosion tore through the hallway, knocking Jose and Henrietta to the ground. From the fading smoke and debris emerged one figure, advancing at a steady and deliberate pace, a silhouette that could only be a gun clutched in its hands, being aimed directly at the two.

Henrietta sprang into action, rushing the figure with her secondary handgun drawn, firing off several shots and attempting to tackle the hostile to the ground, as to keep Jose out of harm's way. This backfired as she was roughly grabbed by the neck and catapulted backwards by a gloved hand.

"Jean!" Jose exclaimed into his earpiece. "We need backup up here, _now_!"

-

"Roger that. We got the Hilscher-Triela fratello on the move."

He turned to the young blonde next to him, who was aiming down the scope of her Dragunov SVD, covering the older, dark skinned girl and her handler far below. The Jean-Rico fratello was currently located an eighth story balcony of the hotel's second building. Rico was currently aiming through a wide variety of different windows that, for any other sniper, would reduce her accuracy. It wasn't a problem for her though.

"Come on, Rico. Let's move."

The man made to enter the building again, motioning for his cyborg to follow. Before he could even reach the threshold of the sliding glass door, however, Rico exclaimed and jumped back to the left as a fifty caliber round thundered straight through the scope of her rifle, continued while narrowly missing Jean's body, and shattered the glass. He spun on his heels, drawing his weapon as Rico beat him to it.

* * *

The Hilscher-Triela fratello moved swiftly, both disliking the fact they they were moving across such open ground as the parking lot of the resort. Triela clenched her shotgun tightly, worried and puzzled about what could be so serious that Henrietta and Jose couldn't handle it on their own. After all, the intel had suggested that there would only be a handful of guards. No more than ten guards and Yuri Petrov's three sons.

She voiced her thoughts to Hilscher as they ran, who reasoned that Petrov must have had some sort of undercover reinforcements checked into the hotel, unknown to the Social Welfare Agnecy. They're discussion was cut terribly short as the car they were passing by exploded.

* * *

Calm yet somehow frantic chatter filled the airways of the Social Welfare Agency's radio interceptors, located in a van off of the resort's property. It wasn't Italian though - not even English. No, it was Russian. This was to be expected, given that they were facing the bodyguard force of a Russian businessman.

"Hey, Olga!" a man asked, turning to the driver in the front seat. "Can you make any sense out of this chatter?"

He handed a pair of headphones to the native Russian woman, formerly an ambassadorial bodyguard. She listened for a moment, before grimacing and looking bewildered.

"_Move, move._" she translated in a monotone voice. "_Yuri-Luyiova siblings have eyes on enemy sniper. Shots fired, target marked. Andreas-Vassilyeva siblings, advance. Enemy reinforcements approaching from east entrance._"

* * *

The boy was barely a teenager - fourteen years old at the most. His platinum blonde hair went surprisingly well with his extremely pale skin. He was dressed in full combat gear and a maroon beret (coveted by the adults of his battalion , which he had changed into in less than one hundred and twenty seconds, which meant that he was getting sloppy.

The grey camouflage allowed him to blend in with the walls and ground of the property, so long as he was being viewed from an adequate distance. He had been offered the new optical camo, which had been bought off of the Chinese agency, but the boy had declined. Invisibility during combat was a coward's method.

He preferred to use the time honored tactic of shock and awe.

These thoughts went through Andreas's mind as he knelt behind a small Fiat car, observing the approaching hostiles and gripping his AK-10 MAUVe, which was standard throughout the agency - an amazing mash of the AK-47 and Steyr AUG, put together in one weapon and designed specially for his organization. Various information flashed across his vision in light blue text, identifying the weapons they were carrying and their distance from him. The two were even highlighted a nice red color as they moved, their heads surrounded by small orange circles.

The augmented reality was courtesy of the neural processor implanted in his brain. Via satellite uplink, it could show him anything he wanted to need to know about the current situation, and seamlessly connected his comrades and him, allowing them to better coordinate their actions in the field. New, advanced technology being developed by the NAPoDS - that is, the _Natsionalʹnoye Agentstvo Po Detyam Sirotam. _The international agency headquartered in Moscow, Russia, dedicated to giving orphaned boys a warm bed and a bowl of soup for lunch every day.

At least, that's what the public thought. In reality, the National Agency for Orphaned Children, composed of Russians, Kazakhs, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Finns, Mongolians and other nationalities that bordered the Russian Federation (people liked to think that they all hated each other now that the Soviet Union was dead and gone, but the complex network of political and economic connections that bound them all together remained unknown to most), was created to develop cybernetic assassins for use by the President of Russia...and all of those other countries, when Mister Putin saw fit. Orphaned young boys who were abandoned by their families and had endured horrible physical or psychological trauma were brainwashed, heavily reconditioned, had a powerful computer slapped into their head, then were trained to be heartless, deadly assassins.

Anybody with enough perseverance and knowledge of Legalese could dig deep into the Russian legislature and find that the NAPoDS was indeed a division of the First Spetsnaz Battalion. Amazingly, nobody had ever seemed to take notice of the Agency, which had never shown any particular interest in cutting down on collateral damage or revising its Rules of Engagement to list innocent bystanders\young children as 'non-expendable'.

Now, Andreas knelt here, in Rome, Italy, on a mission protecting some bigshot investor to the Agency. He scowled and leveled his assault rifle, his neural processor calculating the arc of the grenade launcher affixed to the weapon and telling him the exact trajectory needed to hit the location he wanted it hit.

Smiling, Andreas fired the grenade, mumbling the words "Do svadaniya" as he did so.


	2. Infiltration is Hard

**DISCLAIMER:** I don't own Gunslinger Girl, though I do own the NAPoDS. Also, screw he manga - I've only seen the entire anime so far...so yeah.

* * *

The battle at the Accogline Hotel & Resort had ended with a hasty SWA retreat, the Italians seeing no need to continue the battle so long as their target was dead. Unfortunately for them, the Russians were out for blood.

Following the car explosion that had knocked Triela and Hilscher off of their feet, the Russian cyborg had engaged his Italian counterpart in fierce close quarters combat. Andreas, of course, had the advantage, being a male with similar cybernetic enhancements as Triela – his strength was bolstered by his implants, and naturally better than Triela's, given the natural differences between the male and female bodies.

Jose and Henrietta had made a quick escape out of the main hotel building, and had proceeded to immediately back up the Hilscher-Triela fratello. Now faced with a two-against-one situation, Andreas had attempted to fall back and receive backup from his comrades. This had only partially worked, as his squad's designated marksman had been unable to cover him due being preoccupied trying to hit the enemy markswoman. The Russians and Italians had both retreated, leaving the resort a bloody mess that the Italians would no doubt need to answer for.

* * *

"As you can see from the video here, which our brilliant NATO moles in the Kremlin managed to get us." Pieri Lorenzo, Chief of Special Ops, Section 2, was saying to the crowd of handlers and staff assembled in the conference room. "somehow the Russians got their hands on our 4.0 version technology and began developing it to suit their own needs."

A special emergency meeting had been called for most of the handlers and field staff within the Social Welfare Agency, with one very important subject on the agenda: how in the holy hell did the Russians obtain Italian cyborg technology, and how in the _holiest_ of hells did cyborgs forged by that Italian technology get onto Italian soil?

"From what we can tell from the intel we've gotten, the Russians have taken to implanting sub-dermal armor in their cyborgs, which would explain how the enemy cyborgs were able to take so many hits.."

"So," Jean began, "you're telling us that their cyborgs have body armor _underneath their skin_?"

"That's what we've seen so far - extremely thin layers of Kevlar and metal just underneath the skin. The Kevlar is advanced enough to stop anything less than a 5.56 NATO round, and anything that makes it through just stops or bounces off of the armor. The metal appears to be able to evade most metal detectors as well, or at least the ones we've tried."

"Which means that they can just go through the airport if they wanted to get into Italy." Jean concluded. "But our's can't because their implants aren't masked."

Lorenzo nodded, and was about to add more, only to be interrupted by Jose.

"Wouldn't a layer of metal and Kevlar under their skin decrease their speed and agility?" the man inquired. "It doesn't make sense that they would be as fast as our girls."

"That's what we thought, but when you put together all of their implants, we see that the Russians really know what they're doing. However, they've seemed to have developed some sort of new technology that they're using in their cyborgs. You're all familiar with the reflex boosters that we've implanted in the girls, correct? They conduct electricity throughout the body and send it to where it needs to go - at least, that's the basic idea of how it works. The Russians seem to have improved on it. Not just that, but the nociception regulators - the devices that regulate pain sensory receptors throughout the body - has been improved to an extreme - you could shoot one of the Russian cyborgs three in the stomach and he'd likely feel nothing but a tingling sensation. They've developed their own implants as well - some sort of cell breeder. If you examine the blood of the cyborg on a microscopic level, seen in this photograph here, the amount of monocytes - a type of white blood cell - is off the charts. Simply put, they can't become ill because of the sheer number of cells, at least, not with regular diseases."

"Jesus Christ..." Jean mumbled. Then more clearly, "So, their boys are more robot than human then?"

"Just the fact that we engaged Russian special forces has gotten the government panicking." Lorenzo explained. "The last thing Italy needs is a shadow war with Russia."

Jean grumbled a bit. "Forgive me for sounding naive, but wouldn't the Russians hold off on carrying on a war against the SWA if NATO were involved? If the Russians have cyborgs that are supposedly better than ours, I can only imagine what technology the British or Americans have acquired."

"Oh dear God..." Hilscher exclaimed. "I can just imagine an international team of little cyborg girls right now."

Lorenzo grimaced. "We're not just facing the Russians here. I had a few guys in Section One do a little digging, and we've discovered some interesting things about the Russian agency. It's called the 'National Agency for Orphaned Children' - in Russian with the Latin alphabet, it's acronym is N-A-P-O-D-S, they pronounce it 'neigh-pode-zeh'. It's an international organization. A collaborative project between the governments of Russia and several former Soviet states, and then some. Hell, even China is involved."

"So, we got the Russian SWA teamed up with the Chinese SWA, the Ukrainian SWA, the Estonian SWA, the-"

"We get it, Jean." Jose interrupted. He looked to Lorenzo. "So, what's our plan?"

"I'm going to send a request up to the top. We need backup if the Russians decide to push for a shadow war. If they want black ops, they'll get black ops."

"So, you're suggesting..."

"Teaming up with any agencies akin to the Social Welfare Agency in other countries. A NATO version of the NAPoDS - the North Atlantic SWA, if you will."

* * *

"Activating camo." Andreas said in unison with four other boys, watching in his peripheral as his squadmates vanished into thin air, then at his own hands as they vanished as well. Even his rifle was gone. Invisible. They were vengeful spirits. Optical camo was lovely indeed for these types of operations.

"Yuri, are you ready?" Andreas asked, bringing up a stream from the team sniper's processor. A direct tap, right into his comrade's optic nerve, from over two hundred feet away.

"Yes." the sniper replied in a high pitched voice, causing the three other, slightly older boys in the squad to snicker. Yuri adjusted the scope on his Dragunov and ensured that the safety was off as he crouched. "Let us get moving. I do not like being out in the open."

"What do you know about being out in the open?" Kestutis, the team's designated "heavy" and resident Lithuanian demanded.

"Shut up, Kes!" Andreas snapped. "Yuri's been with the Agency longer than you!"

"You're just defending him because he's Russian like you, Andre!"

"Just shut up, Kes!" Filips, the Latvian forward scout exclaimed. "We're all Eurasian!"

"Agreed. Everyone shut up and let us get moving." Valentyn the Ukrainian said happily.

Andre, Yuri, Fil, Kus, and Val were considered the most successful of the Azvenov Experiments; the fastest, strongest, and coldest. The only team of elite cyborgs deemed skilled and worthy enough to take on an Italian team of elite cyborgs.

"_Now that you've sorted that all out..._" Vassilyeva, Andre's handler, growled over the radio frequency. "_You don't have the heavy vehicles you boys have grown accustomed to in Georgia and Mongolia. You'll have to make it into the compound undetected - no gate crashing this time. As you were briefed, the main objective is to obtain as much intelligence as possible about the Italian cyborg threat. The secondary objective is to hinder the Italian ability to produce and maintain cyborg technology. The tertiary objective is to incapacitate or kill enemy cyborgs if given the chance. Attempt nothing but the main objective unless conditions are ideal and of little consequence to the mission. Am I understood?_"

"Yes ma'me." the five answered together. "We will serve Mother Eurasia to the best of our ability."

"_Good. Move out, stay quiet, and Andre..._"

"Yes, Vassilyeva?" Andre inquired.

"_Try not to level the compound._"

Smirking, Andre motioned for his team to move out.

* * *

Triela yawned and fell back onto her bed, admiring the collection of teddy bears on her dresser, which she had just finished reorganizing. It was late, and it had been a long day. All she wanted was to just crawl under the covers and drift away to sleep. Henrietta didn't have that luxury - she was in surgery after taking several rounds from -...a gun. Another cyborg's gun.

A Russian boy, from what she understood. Faster, stronger, and generally better than any of the girls in the Social Welfare Agency's compound.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Claes asked offhandedly, flipping the page in her book about solar power.

Triela shrugged, even though her roommate wasn't looking at her. "I guess I'm having trouble coping or something." she laughed. "There are...cyborgs. Like us. Fighting for another country. Against us."

"They're boys. Russians." Claes said, stating the only facts that they knew. "Logic would dictate that those boys would be stronger than us, given that they're males with similar if not better implants. Plus, Russia makes tall, strong people."

"I thought Russia was backwater though? Didn't our history books in class say so?"

"No - that was the Soviet Union. It collapsed in the year 1990. The Russian Federation has had about twenty years to rebuild its strength. Besides, I'm sure most of what those textbooks say are tailored to what the Agency wants us to know."

* * *

The squad expertly and quietly scaled the tall, barbed wire topped fence that marked the perimeter of the Italian Social Welfare Agency's compound - far out, by what their processor's uplink labeled as a shooting range and killhouse. With Filips in the lead far in front, scouting the area ahead with thermal goggles. Andre (taking the left) and Valentyn (taking the right) walked about a hundred feet apart from each other, with Kestutis in the middle a bit farther ahead. At the rear was Yuri, watching their six and prepared to take out anybody ahead or behind.

A pair of headlights appeared in the distance, growing ever closer. The boys payed no mind, merely slowing to a slow, hunched walk at the patrol jeep rumbled right past them, before picking up the pace again. Their optical armor ensured that they were invisible to anything short of thermal vision. This was the easy part. Entering to compound itself would be difficult, however. There was no doubt about that. Maneuvering in between buildings was no challenge either - few guard were posted so far within the relative safety of the compound.

Coming up to two narrow, long buildings labeled "DORMS", Andre stopped, a thought crossing his mind.

"Guys." he said, unheard by anyone but his crew thanks to their radio link. "Vass said to "incapacitate or kill enemy cyborgs in only ideal circumstances or those of little consequence to the mission", correct?"

"Yeah." Fil replied.

"And these are the dorms..." Kes began.

"So you're suggesting..." Yuri contributed.

"We eliminate some of the hostiles?" Val completed the thought.

"Exactly. It's late at night - the Italians are likely asleep. If we can figure out which dorm rooms house the enemy cyborgs, we can easily enter, smother them with a pillow or off them with a silenced shot, then continue on with the mission."

"Have we ever told you how much we love the way you think?"

* * *

"You're a nerd, you know that?" Triela teased, looking out the window, a bored expression on her face.

"Your point?" Claes replied, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't got one."

"Exactly."

There wasn't even anything to see outside - it was the same old patch of dark ground, illuminated poorly by a path light. Nothing of interest, same as-...

"What was that...?" Triela asked herself.

"What was what?" Claes inquired.

"A...a shape. Something moved...outside the window."

"Probably a bug. Or a bat. Did you know that bats-"

"No, it wasn't an animal. It was too big to be anything that could get into the compound unseen. It was tall; it didn't have a shape...it was clear or something. Like a ghost."

"Are you saying there's a ghost running around causing trouble?"

"No, but-"

"It's probably just a girl who couldn't sleep going for a walk."

Triela furrowed her brow, staring holes into the glass pane of the window in an effort to catch a glimpse of the thing against. She yawned.

"I guess you're right."

* * *

"Kes, you yak!" Andreas hissed.

"Why am I a yak?" his Lithuanian friend demanded.

"You were way too close to the window! I said to keep your distance! Someone could have saw you!"

"We're invisible you idiot!"

"It doesn't matter!"

Andreas scowled and scanned the various doors that led into the dorm rooms. So far there were only two with lights on. Fiddling with the keyboard on his wrist, he activated the Xaver system built into his helmet, along with everyone else's. From what he had seen, the Italians didn't like sending their cyborgs in armored, or with special gear. Sure, it gave them the element of surprise, but what use was surprise when you could take out a single target with a burst of fifty caliber machine gun fire through twelve inches of reinforced concrete, all well never laying eyes on your target?

The advanced technology the NAPoDS used was privately designed and manufactured by Chinese and Swedish defense contractors. This allowed the Agency to outfit its boys with the tools to take down an entire army, all for a reasonable cost, relative to the gear's effectiveness.

The Xaver System was a godsend in and of itself. Using less energy than a cell phone making a call, it fired radio waves out in the direction it was pointing, that upon penetrating walls, created an image of what was on the other side. You could see people, their weapons, the room's furniture, and even any nondescript entrances from a hundred feet away through concrete walls. The only thing you couldn't see was color.

"Hostiles in most of these dorms, Andre..." Filip said. "I don't like this."

"Neither do I. We're right in the lion's den." Yuri agreed.

"They're paired up with roommates too..." Val added.

"Stop worrying! It'll be fine!" Andre snapped.

He approached the nearest door, through which two small figures lay in sleeping positions. The door was locked, as he expected. It was never that easy.

"Watch my back, guys." he ordered. "I need to pick this lock..."

The other four did as they were told, assuming defensive positions surrounding Andre in a semi-circle. Several seconds later, they were in. Entering, leaving Yuri and Val outside, still cloaked, they stood. Three ghosts approached the bunk bed. Expressionless, Andre took the pillow from under the top one's head as Fillip did the same with the bottom's. Silently, two cyborgs passed into the next life, without even knowing why.

* * *

"Shut off that light, Claes." Triela mumbled, pulling her blanket over head. "I'm trying to get some sleep!"

"Just let me finish this chapter. The vampire and the werewolf are fighting over the human girl, and-"

"I don't care! Let me sleep!"

"Fine! Just-"

_AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!_

A high pitched scream echoed throughout the compound. Wordlessly, Triela rolled out of bed onto the ground. From under her bed, she pulled her favorite shotgun.

"Something's going on." she stated, looking up at Claes. "You coming?"

Claes sighed, putting down her book and retrieving a handgun from underneath Triela's pillow.. "If you insist."

Bursting out of their dorm, they were met with another girl about to knock on their door.

"Triela, do you know what's going on?" the girl asked her fellow cyborg.

"No. Someone screamed?"

"It's coming from-"

"Rico's room." Claes said, nodding in the direction of it.

Rushing towards Rico's dorm, the three armed girls formed up around the door, behind which noises of a struggle could be heard.

"On three, got it?" Triela asked.

The other two nodded. As the eldest girl began counting however, something seemed off. Something wasn't right. Behind Claes, she saw it again. The air shimmering - a large, invisible shape.

"Claes! Behind you!"

The black haired girl twirled around, aiming at the air behind her as another gun went off, hitting Claes in the stomach at point-blank range. Claes fired as she went down, causing the shimmer to move - stumble - backwards, before hitting the ground with a soft thud. The third girl flew through Rico's door, and Triela had no choice but to follow as Claes dragged herself into a sitting position against the wall. Other girls would be coming - adult soldiers as well. Gunfire in the middle of the night, especially this much, was extremely rare.

Triela gasped at the scene. Two fairly tall, lanky figures stood in Rico's room. One held Rico in a stranglehold, arms tight around her neck as she dangled in the air. They weren't shimmers - they were completely visible. Dressed in full, grey-green combat gear, she knew in an instant who and what they were.

"Russians."

* * *

"This is really bad, Andre! REALLY BAD! WHAT DID I TELL YOU?" Filips shouted in Mandarin, their op language. The idea of speaking Mandarin during European operations was meant to confuse the enemy and convince them that they were fighting Chinamen, and thus place blame accordingly, rather than draw attention to the Russian Federation and the rest of eastern Europe.

"SHUT UP AND MOVE!" Andre barked, dropping the little Italian cyborg he had been in the process of terminating. "Kes-"

"Already on it!" the large Lithuanian boy declared, uncloaking from his position in the corner and lunging at the newly arrive Italians.

"There's no way to complete the mission!" Filips moaned, shoving the little girl's desk into a position where it would provide cover. "We've been compromised, we need to go!"

Scowling under his banclava, Andre nodded. "Agreed. The minute there's an opening, we run."

"That would be now!" Kes roared, sending the dark skinned Italian girl flying into the wall.

"MOVE THEN, DAMNIT!" The three rushed out the door, sprinting as fast as they could. "VAL! YURI! COME ON!"

* * *

The little Russian boy lay in fetal position, cursing the blood flowing from his shoulder. It didn't hurt much - but it would give away his position. It was a stupid move. Very stupid. He had thought that he could remained cloaked and hidden for long enough that the enemies around him would soon disperse, then make a escape, or even complete the mission on his own. So stupid! When Andre had ran past, the boy had been frozen in place, unable to move. Filips was right - he was in the lion's den. It had been two hours; he had been laying curled up against the side of the building for two hours, praying for the enemy to just go away.

But they wouldn't, even when ordered too. The cyborg's wanted to know what had happened, how their friend could have been attacked in their own headquarters, then, later, how _nine_ of their own could have been killed in their own headquarters. . A dark skinned girl led the charge for information, in what the boy supposed was a stunning display of rebellion by the look on the adults' faces. He wished that he knew Italian; all he was going on right now was tone, body language, and facial expressions. The processor in his brain would continue transmitting its encrypted, masked signals back to the NAPoDS; they knew where he was, and could even see what he saw.

Andre hadn't meant to abandon him, he knew. It was his own fault. Everything was always the little sniper's fault.

His stomach rumbled. He had now way to control it; it would be his undoing. Several people looked in his direction. After they discovered that there was something squishy and invisible sticking to the ground next to the building, he knew the jig was up. He had lost too much blood to put up a fight or run. Just from a stupid little nine millimeter bullet.

Sitting up, the boy decided to die with dignity. Uncloaking, he ignored the gasps of awe and disbelief from those around him at the fact that their enemy could become invisible on command. Adults were coming towards him now. To apprehend and torture him, he was sure. His cyanide pill was lost, and his handgun had skidded across the ground when he had been shot. He couldn't even kill himself.

Unstrapping his helmet, he stood. He held the grey combat helmet at his side as the adult soldiers and agents approached. Looking at them with cold, almost dead eyes, he saluted with a black gloved hand, standing ramrod straight in an attempt to appear taller.

"Sirs." Yuri said in German. "I assume you're wondering why the Bundersrepublik would condone the confiscation of so many of your cyborgs?"


	3. Totally Winging It

**DISCLAIMER:** I don't own Gunslinger Girl, though I do own the NAPoDS. Also, screw he manga - I've only seen the entire anime so far...so yeah.

* * *

"We know you aren't German!" Jean in German shouted in Yuri's face. "You and your squadmates are from the National Agency for Orphaned Children, _a Russian agency_."

The boy was currently tied to a chair in a dimly lit concrete room, with heavy-duty chains to prevent him from breaking free. If that weren't bad enough, there were currently three hostile cyborgs aiming rapid firing submachine guns directly at his head at point blank range.

"I do not know why you will not accept facts, sir. I am telling you the truth - NATO was getting nervous about your little girls and asked the Bundersrepublik to do something about it."

German had so far been proven to be mutually intelligible between the Italians and Yuri. His story wasn't faring very well though.

"You're lying and we know it! Your weaponry is Chinese manufactured!"

"How could you possibly-"

"We have methods."

The two stared at each other for several long moments, neither one's glare wavering.

"In addition," Jean added. "We've been tracing the signals that are transmitting out of that dumb little head of yours. They point east. The only reason we haven't sliced you open to see how you tick is because, A) you could be a valuable source of intelligence, and B) we already know all we need to know about your little friends."

"No you don't." Yuri said. "You want to know what's transmitting the signal, don't you? You know it isn't an ordinary microchip."

Jean said nothing, his expression stoic.

"I have no fear, pig." Yuri declared, allowing his Russian accent to flood into his German. "For I know that Andre will save me. Andre and the others."

Jean lunged at this sudden breakthrough. "Who's Andre?" he asked, although the man had an inkling that Andre was some sort of pet name for the Russian's handler.

"He is a fallen angel. The brass likes to call him the Quake Boy."

"Why is that?"

Boy. That meant it was likely another cyborg.

"Because. The Earth itself trembles when he and his squad go into action."

* * *

"Nine Italian cyborgs dead." an elderly, chubby man with an impressive mustache said with obviously suppressed rage. "One Russian cyborg captured. And no information about the Italian program obtained. What do you four have to say for yourselves?"

Andre, Kes, Fil, and Val were standing in a line, with ramrod posture, all gussied up in their dress uniforms - the ones that were only broken out when someone important came to visit them. At the moment, it was rather amazing that a Russian general had managed to come to their warehouse headquarters in Rome unnoticed.

"Permission to speak, General, sir?" Andre asked, looking straight ahead.

"Permission granted...what was it? Abraham?"

"Andreas, sir."

"Spit it out, boy!"

"Sir, our squad was giving three objectives, sir. We were in the process of completing one of those objectives when-"

"Exactly. _One_of those objectives." the General broke in. "You were too busy with your own bloodlust and the thought of a panty raid that you forsook your two more important objectives."

"...panty raid, sir?" Val asked without permission, clearly confused.

It then occurred to the General that these boys - these machines - knew little to nothing of life outside their little bubble of blood, anger, and gunpowder that was the NAPoDS. It was a shame that teenage boys didn't even know what something as elementary as a panty raid was. Of course, they were lucky to live to be teenagers. From his understanding of the lab reports, most of the cyborgs died before their thirteenth birthday.

"Never mind that. The point is, you wanted to kill, you _needed _to kill something, so you chose to do that under the auspices of completing an objective."

"Sir." Filips said, not even asking for permission. What rude little brats! "In all fairness, we _were _told to terminate enemy cyborgs if it did not endanger the mission."

"Yes." Andre contributed. "Our logic was that if we completed that objectives first, it would mean that the other two objectives would be easier and less dangerous to the overall mission."

The General turned to the small gaggle of field staff and handlers that had accompanied the NAPoDS on this mission. "When they get back to Moscow, I want all of their conditioning increased."

Murmurs and gasps from the group, but silence from the cyborgs.

"Sir?" a woman spoke up. From the crowd emerged Adelaide Vassilyeva, Andreas's handler. "If I may be so bold, I'd like to point out that its thinking like that that has successfully completed so many other missions for Squad One. Their level of conditioning is enough to ensure their compliance and obedience, but not so much as to stymie their creative and problem solving abilities. Had that one girl not woken up, the mission would have likely been a resounding success."

Andreas suddenly stepped forward. "Sir, may I inquire as to what shall be done about my squadmate and comrade, Yuri, sir?"

* * *

Rico stood on the left side of the room, aiming her P90 at the boy's head at point blank range. Triela did the same from behind him, as did Henrietta on his right-hand side. She stared head on as the boy was interrogated by her handler, and found herself beginning to respect the boy. He was able to keep calm and continue on with his story to Jean despite the circumstances. Was it bad to respect your enemy? Respecting wasn't the same as liking...or was it? She certainly didn't like this boy, whose friends had attempted to smother her in her sleep. She'd have to ask Jean later, or maybe Triela.

After several more minutes of back and forth, the boy's behavior changed. His eyes became more than serious - dead almost. Like the look the Italian girl's got in the midst of combat. The little blonde boy looked around, at her, at Henrietta, and even twisting his head around to glimpse at Triela. He then returned his gaze to Jean, who demanded to know "what that was about"; but the boy wasn't all 'there', anymore. It was clear that his mind was elsewhere.

* * *

In answer to Andre's question, live feed from Yuri's neural processor had been brought up on the numerous computer screens that made up the mission's temporary communications center.

"Yuri, can you hear me?" Svetlana Luyiova spoke into a microphone. "Yuz, can you hear me?"

The feed from the screen cut out twice for less than a second in rapid succession. He could hear them through the implanted microphone.

"Yuri, can you give us an assessment of your current situation?"

Yuri's head swiveled around in various directions, revealing the three adolescent, expressionless girls holding him at gunpoint. Cyborgs, of course.

"What do we do?" Vas asked nobody in particular. "He's under heavy guard, and their compound is bound to have beefed up security since our failed op."

The General grimaced, furrowing his brow, a very scary sight for anyone who did not know that he was indeed not a walrus-human hybrid, but merely a grouchy military official.

"There's no other option." He stated. "We need to send his processor into meltdown. Terminate him. If the Italians get their hands on that technology-"

Svetlana's expression became panicked. "Meltdown?!" she exclaimed. "Don't you think that's a bit extreme? I mean, Yuri is one of our best marksmen – he's an extraordinary shot! It'll be ages before we find another boy that can shoot like him!"

Meltdown, more professionally labeled 'termination', was the process of overheating a cyborg's neural processor to the point that it began to damage the brain. Within minutes, the processor would heat to the point that the brain would no longer be able to function, literally melting the brain and every component of the processor with it. Most of the handlers present had only ever heard of meltdown being used in extreme situations, such the time a cyborg was taken hostage by the Georgian Secret Service, leading to the short-lived invasion of Georgia by Russia in 2008 (the Russians had figured they could crush the Georgians and retrieve the cyborg before the international community could react; 'twas not so.), or when a cyborg was critically injured behind enemy lines in the United States state of Alaska, trapped behind enemy lines and just lying in the snow waiting for the Americans to cut his head open.

"There's no choice." the General stated coldly. "It would be impossible for us to retrieve Yuri without heavy weaponry and declaring all out war on the Republic of Italy."

A long, sad silence hung in the hair for a long time, with nobody speaking. The thought of abandoning, even killing, one of the boys they had all worked with for so long was horrible for most present. Most were resigned to it, though. You didn't question a direct order from the brass. You just didn't.

"UNACCEPTABLE!" Andreas exclaimed, walking up to the General. "Sir, I'm afraid I cannot allow you to issue the termination order, sir!"

The General narrowed his cold, beady eyes. "Hm? You and what army, boy?"

On cue, Val, Kes, and Fil stepped forwards as well, a determined glare on their faces.

"Sir, we regret to inform you that we refuse to leave a comrade behind, sir." Val said.

"Sir, we could not continue on as human beings if we left our comrade in enemy hands, sir." Fil added.

"Sir, we are determined to carry out a rescue operation, sir." Kes finished.

"Sir, you cannot stop us, _sir_." Andre stated coolly adding the 'sir' at the end as if it were some sort of insult.

The General seemed astonished that such an act of rebellion was capable by the cyborgs. Just the thought that these _things_ were capable of disobeying orders was contradictory to everything the NAPoDS was reporting about their research.

"Humans?" the General scoffed. "_Humans__? Don't make me laugh boy! _Look at the kevlar under your skin, the computer in your brain, and the blood on your hands and tell me that you're _human_. You're more machine than man, boy! For all practical purposes, expendable! An impressive luxury that the Prime Minister prefers to wasting Spetsnaz lives!"

The boys remained calm, glaring directly into the General's eyes. Andreas moved quickly. Far too quickly for the General, or anyone really, to react. He swiped the General's legs out from underneath him and grabbed his left arm, wrenching it painfully behind his back, then catching the large man and catching him from falling by locking him in a headlock.

"_Not human?!_" Andreas hissed. "What makes something _human_? What gives _you_ the right to dictate those things? We feel the pain of the bullets-"

"But you don't cry." the General interjected, gritting his teeth.

"Because we are expected not to. We feel sadness, anger, and abandonment."

"But no happiness."

"Because we rarely have reason to. We have hopes and aspirations."

"But all related to killing."

"Because it's all we know, all thanks to you."

He jabbed the General hard in the small of his back, causing the man to restrain a grunt of pain.

"Stop acting like we asked to be monsters." he growled. "Like we had a choice in the matter. I was born in a Moscow alleyway, crippled by a psychotic child molester while begging for a few rubles to spend on next week's slice of bread, then kidnapped by the NAPoDS and made a ward of the Federation."

"I was a pickpocket, right?" Fil inquired, glancing towards his own handler. "Kidnapped from the subway station I was sleeping in for the night?"

"And what was Yuri?" Val asked, directing the question towards Svetlana. "A suicidal paraplegic kid living off of gruel in a Siberian orphanage?"

"I'm _sure _he never asked to go from that to being a killing machine taken hostage." Kes said.

More silence, even more horrible than the last. These people hated being confronted with the ethics of the project. The pasts of their soldiers. The only reason they knew anything at all was because an old handler went crazy with guilt and delivered classified files to their respective cyborgs, only to mysteriously drown in the Volga River three hours later. Andreas silently released the General, allowing him to fall flat on his walrus moustached face.

The General quickly scrambled indignantly to his feet, brushing off his uniform and straightening his various medals, as Andreas stepped back into line with his comrades.\. Overall, he seemed unphased by Andreas's speech.

"There is still the issue of launching a full scale attack on their compound." he reasoned. "It's simply impossible."

It was Andre's turn to scowl.

"Use your imagination." he commanded. "If terrorist groups can get tanks and missiles onto Italian soil, so can we."

"It'd be an international fiasco!"

"Only if the Italians want to tell the world they've been using innocent little girls as cyborg assassins. Otherwise, it's just another terrorist attack."

* * *

**[FOUR HOURS LATER]**

Rico was dumbfounded by the boy's behavior. He went from pretending to be German to acknowledging his Russian nationality in two seconds flat. He was now spouting all sorts of loud stuff about how he loved the Eurasian Federation, and he would never give in to Jean "the Pig" and his "little Princesses". The change in attitude startled her more than anything else.

Just as Jean seemed about to get physical with the boy, rough him up a bit to get some answers, a random office worker bolted through the door into the interrogation room.

"Jean!" he exclaimed, clearly out of breath, waving a piece of paper in Jean's face. "Look at this! The Chief wants you in the conference room, NOW."

Jean took the paper, and scowled as he read the words on it. Glancing back at the Russian boy, he asked: "What do we do about him? We can't just leave him under guard by the girls."

"Why's that?" the office worker asked.

"Because, frankly, I don't trust them not to put a bullet in his skull for something he says."

Triela scowled at this. "I'll keep everyone in line, Jean." the dark skinned girl spoke up. "Don't worry."

Jean reluctantly exited the room, closing the door behind him. It was only about ten seconds before the boy began shouting in Russian.

* * *

Jean walked into the conference room, trailing just behind the rest of the usual group. The Chief began immediately, wasting no time.

"There's a convoy of eight armored trucks with mounted machine guns coming up the road from Rome. It's as simple as that. There was also a civilian designated helicopter doing a flyby of the compound an hour ago. This is obviously the Russians trying to give a display of brute force."

"They're trying to scare us?" Jean asked in disbelief.

Lorenzo nodded. "We've begun barricading the entrance to the compound, and along the road leading up to it. There's no way of telling how many Russians there are, how many of them are cyborgs, and what kind of firepower they're packing. Handlers, get your girls prepped for battle. Everyone else who can fire a gun, arm yourself."

"Wait." Jose said. "This doesn't make any sense! Surely the Russians know they can't beat us on our own soil?"

Jean answered. "That doesn't mean they can't take as many of us as possible out with them, does it?"

"So, it's a suicide mission they're shooting for?" Hilscher suggested.

"It sure looks that way."

* * *

"Are you sure you can drive this thing?" Fil asked as the vehicle hit a fairly large bump.

"I took a crash course!" Kes assured Fil. "My only complaint is how cramped it is."

"I sure was nice of those FKF guys to just give her to us like that..." Val said, admiring the interior.

"Yeah," Andre agreed. "assault rifles can be very convincing when used right."

"And fired directly into the skull." Val added.

"Agreed." the three other said in unison, then chuckling together.

A Leopard 2A6 was a difficult vehicle to drive through the forest. More importantly, it was an even more difficult vehicle to drive through the the forest completely unnoticed. Main battle tanks were rarely meant to be stealthy, especially ones bought off of the Swiss black market just over the border.

"You all do realize that this isn't going to work unless our terrorist friends pull through...right?" Fil asked. "That this is a suicide mission otherwise?"

"Yeah." Andre answered, the others nodding in agreement. "But we fought for this op, so there's no way we're calling it off now."

"That was a risky move..." Val said quietly. "When we get back to Moscow, the brass is going to have your conditioning cranked up to the maximum."

"Yeah." Andre agreed, as if resigned to the fact, leaning back in the commander's chair. "But Adelaide'll fight for me. And if push comes to shove, I can always shoot myself."

The thought of suicide rarely crossed any of the cyborgs' minds. It never crossed any of the heavily conditioned ones. Some were even conditioned enough to not know the word, or even be able to understand the concept of ending one's own life.

"You'd rather die than be conditioned more?" Fil stated in a soft voice.

Silence enveloped the tank.

"You're amazing, Andre."

* * *

The attack happened quickly, and without any lulls. The trucks barreled through what barricades the Social Welfare Agency had set up. The gunfire was constant, although it was clear that the Italians were far better equipped in this situation. The cyborgs were set up along strategic points along the compound's entrance, armed with assault rifles equipped with forty millimeter underbarrel grenade launchers. The idea was for them to take out the trucks with their grenades before their machine guns got within range of a majority of the SWA personnel.

What the Italians certainly weren't expecting was an attack from behind, where almost no personnel were stationed. A Leopard 2A6 main battle tank, 120 millimeter cannon and all, charged through the eight foot tall razor wire fence the outlined the outer reaches of the compound, approaching the SWA from behind, cannon and three machine guns ablazing the whole time.

Sandwiched between two lines, the Italians were forced to spread out, leaving the entrance slightly less defended than planned, allowing a small contingent of Russians to push their way through. This advantage was short lived, though.

* * *

"Move, move, move!" Andre screamed, ripping open the hatch of the tank.

"The tracks are screwed! We're dead in the water!" Kes exclaimed, desperately trying to rev the tank's engines.

"That's why we need to move, you idiot!" Val shouted, grabbing his rifle and bursting up out of the armored vehicle.

Heavy gunfire was directed their way, but the boys payed it no mind, suited up in thick kevlar and helmets. Firing back through the smoke now enveloping their battlefield, they saw their main attackers. The only things standing the way between them and the building Yuri was being held in. Five young girls, armed and armored.

Covering behind the tank, Andre took a deep breath, steeling himself for the task at hand. Reloading his rifle with a fresh clip he ducked out from behind the vehicle sprinting right towards the enemy, directly into their gunfire.

"GIVE ME MY COMRADE!" he screamed at the top of his lungs in German, knowing they would understand his anger.

Bullets ripped at his armor, but he ignored them, instead plowing directly into the tallest of the girls, a dark skinned blonde wielding a shotgun. He began brutally punching her with brass knuckled fists, not letting up in the slightest as Kes and Val followed suit. Fil rocketed past the brawl towards the door to the building, which had been heavily barricaded. The Lithuanian planted the breaching charges on the door, trusting in his squadmates to cover him as he did so.

The dark girl was strong though. Definitely stronger than Andreas had anticipated. She kicked him off and bolted to her feet, drawing a pistol from her holster. "Why won't you just _die_?" she demanded in German, firing point blank into Andre's stomach several times before he could recover.

The boy stumbled backwards, clutching his abdomen. With an almost feral growl, he pictured sweet little Yuri, alone in the interrogation room, listening to the explosions that were rocking the compound, euphoric with the new hope that his comrades had come back for him.

"Because," Andre said, cracking his neck and drawing a handgun of his own. "Yuri's all alone in there, and we're his last damn hope. I'm not about to leave my friend to die! Stand aside, little girl!"

Then something neither side expected happened. Jets. Strike fighters, soaring overhead at the speed of sound, low to the ground. Then the entire compound was rumbling and shaking, buildings collapsing into clouds of dust as even bigger plumes of fire rose up into the sky. The cyborgs, both Russian and Italian, stopped what they were doing and looked up in awe as several jets circled back around. Then they saw the roundels on the jets' wings.

"What the hell?" Val shouted. "_What the hell_?"

"No way.." Fil mumbled, leaning against the barricaded door, which had yet to blow.

"Freaking Americans...?!" Andrea choked, exasperated.

The girls took this opportunity to regroup and nurse their wounds for a moment as the entire battle screeched to a stop, looking up in awe at the fighter squadron that zoomed above their heads. Andre realized something very important, snapping his gaze from the jets to Filip. To the red timer on the explosions.

Before Andre even had time to shout, the charges went off, catapulting Filip - or pieces of him, the dust was extremely thick - spectacularly through the air, and opening the building of Yuri's captivity to the other Russians. This seemed to signal a recommencing of the battle, as guns began to fire again.

"Grab Fil!" Andre ordered Val, who complied by throwing Filip over his shoulder.

The four Russians rushed into the building, all laughing somewhat maniacally at their mostly successful plan, following the holographic indicator that appeared in their vision. God bless neural processors.

* * *

"_Breaking news, as an American fighter squadron stationed at a NATO air base near Rome as reportedly launched a major attack on a terrorist installation south of the city. This coming as the rising trend of terrorism in Italy seems to have been reaching its climax. A French military official representing NATO, who has also stated that numerous French fighters and pilots were involved in the strike, has reported that "the terrorist operations being supported by corrupt politicians and ex-military personnel were becoming a clear threat to the Republic of Italy and NATO as a whole. Stay tuned for the latest information, after this break!_"

The General put out the cigar he had been smoking, regarding the situation as it stood.

"Well, well," he said to himself. The warehouse was empty - all available personnel were sent to be involved in the attack. "Looks like the enemy has just become an enemy of our enemy."

* * *

**A\N:** Schooooool...it gets in the way! Sowwy. I think I made Jean and Jose pretty OOC in this chapter. I've also likely ruined the entire story and presented an interesting series of improbable, unlikely, and generally odd things and reasonings in this chapter. At least it turns out the Yuri was telling the truth about NATO...right? Oh well. If you still like this train wreck, please review and feel free to read the next piece of wreckage! Danke! Baaaai!


End file.
